


if you sleep always like this

by collectingnames



Series: Fjorclay Week [6]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon Temporary Character Death, Dreams, Fate, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Shared Dreams, Yearning, fjorclay, fjorclay week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23739562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collectingnames/pseuds/collectingnames
Summary: Sometimes, Caduceus dreams of the ocean, and wakes with the scent of seabreeze in his nose.  Sometimes he dreams of a sinking ship.  After that, he stops dreaming of the sea for a while.  And one night, he dreams that he's taken.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord
Series: Fjorclay Week [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1710829
Kudos: 59





	if you sleep always like this

**Author's Note:**

> Caduceus's crazy high insight vs Fjord's crazy high deception, FIGHT. This is so wild to me so far all of my fjorclay week fics are 2k+ words.  
> (Title from In a Week by Hozier)

Sometimes, Caduceus dreams of the ocean, and wakes with the scent of seabreeze in his nose. Sometimes he dreams of a sinking ship. After that dream, he stops dreaming of the sea for a while. It’s a shame, he liked those, liked the sense of calm they left him with. There are mornings where he wakes up with his chest hurting for no discernable reason. And one night, he dreams that he’s been taken. Tendrils crawl out of the impenetrable shadows of the Savalirwood and through the gates, crawl under the gap between the door and the threshold. Until the tendrils reach him, lash him down, bind him hopelessly. The rocks and tree roots underneath scrape and claw at his back as this force he doesn’t understand pulls him into its clutches. When he wakes up his heart is pounding and a feeling of guilt digs its claws into his mind. He let someone down, it’s not just him that was captured. The nightmares continue for the next few nights, leave him waking up breathless.

The monotony of looking over the Grove suddenly changes when adventurers of all people trudge through the woods looking for him. Well, looking for help, but they seem to think he’s someone who can help them. He can see the grief hanging over nearly all of them and that’s when they explain that one of their number is dead, killed in an attempt to rescue three of them. At first, he thinks they’re going to ask if they can bury him here but to his surprise, they ask him not to bury their friend, they’ve already done that, they’re asking him to rescue their captured friends and an unknown number of other innocent individuals who’ve been taken. It seems like the right thing to do.

When the battle is finally over, the leader Lorenzo just a pile of ash at Caleb’s hand, they find the room full of cages. Nila is reunited with the people she lost. The Mighty Nein with those they lost. The three of them seem in worse shape than the others. Yasha especially. They take off all the chains but the three don’t wake up. All of them look like they’ve been through hell and back, no one is eager to interrupt their rest. There’s something familiar though, about Fjord. He sees him and thinks of the sea. He doesn’t know anything about him but there’s something about this man that feels so familiar.

The dreams don’t stop, and it’s getting harder to think they’re just dreams. Especially the more time he spends as one of the Mighty Nein… and Fjord. At least with their time as impromptu pirates, they’re constantly around water, dreaming about water isn’t strange. Though after breaking one of the seals on Uk’otoa he dreams about a lake. It’s a calm lake, perfectly still, small waves lapping on the shore where he sits. Until he tries to stand up and leave. The water grows angry and what was once a lake suddenly doubles, triples, he can’t even tell, the water just suddenly consumes him. He thrashes, desperately trying to swim back to the surface. When he instinctively opens his mouth to scream he freezes, he can breathe the water. The next morning he stops and watches as Fjord suddenly unveils a new ability to control water.

He can’t say they’re just weird dreams anymore, dreams have meaning, and somehow these dreams mean Fjord. Though he can’t wrap his head around how or why. Whatever it is, now is not the time to dwell on it. Not with the tension between him and his friends and Avantika’s crew and the threat of possibly unleashing Uk’otoa. And there are some, other things he doesn’t know what to do with.

He doesn’t know why his thoughts keep drifting to Fjord, even when he’s awake. Maybe it has something to do with these glimpses of a different Fjord he keeps seeing. When he lets his mask slip and shows some vulnerability to come to him for advice. And **this** Fjord only makes it harder for him to ignore the growing fondness that’s taken root inside him. This Fjord is, he’s scared, a good man stuck in a bad place in need of some reassurance that he hasn’t been lost to it. He’s happy to give it to him. How Fjord came to the conclusion that he’s not a good man is just beyond his understanding.

It must seem like he’s just grown used to Fjord’s strange dreams by the time they make it to the Arbor Exemplar and when the morning comes he cautiously asks what he has to do to follow Her. He **desperately** wants to just let it out already, say ‘I know, I know because last night I dreamt I was in a warm burrow of leaves and roots and I couldn’t see anyone but somehow I knew I wasn’t alone, I knew you were in there with me.’ But he has no idea if this connection runs both ways if Fjord sees glimpses of his life in his own dreams.

He knows there has to be something to it, but he stays silent.

Asleep on the floor of the Forge, dreaming deeply he finds himself lying on a forest floor. The sky above is a tranquil black sea of stars, wind whistling through the treetops. This place is beautiful in its mundanity, not grand and enchanted in some way, just a hub of life. A place where life starts and completes its cycle unhindered. In contrast to the warm stone beneath him in the waking world, the grass beneath him is soft and cool. 

But then one of the stars blinks, and another, and another. He freezes in horror as the eyes filling the sky above him all blink frantically and snap to fix on him. As quickly as it begins it ends, the eyes blinking out like snuffed candles. Heat and pain wash over him as the last eye closes and the world falls into suffocating darkness for a few seconds.

He’s brought back to consciousness somewhat gently by Fjord, clutching a bloody hand over an equally bloody chest wound, “I need your help.”

He brushes Fjord’s hand aside and puts pressure and magic to it.

“Thank you,” Fjord mumbles, woozy from his injuries.

“Do you want to-?”

“I need to sit down,” he sluggishly moves to sit, as if his body is unspeakably heavy.

“Why don’t we-,” he’s cut off by his own panicked train of thought and just picks him up and carries him out of the room. Fresh air would be best but it’s too cold, just somewhere private. He finds one of the storerooms off to the side and shoulders it open. He sets him down on a crate, “So um, how did that happen?”

“I threw the sword into the liquid rock,” he sounds a little better now, but still beat to shit.

“Your sword?” He says incredulously.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His voice is small and honest, “I don’t like being a hostage.”

He tears off a strip of fabric from the hem of his shirt and tries to clean Fjord’s chest, “How do you feel?”

“I honestly don't know. That sword was all I had,” it’s not remorse in his voice but not hope for what this could become, just honesty.

“Well, I assure you that's not true. God, I haven't regained my spells yet. Um, maybe I can-,” he rambles to himself trying to think of what else he can do.

“Thank you,” Fjord interrupts, the most self-assuredly he’s ever heard him say anything.

“For what? I'm at a loss, I don't-.”

Fjord clumsily takes his hand, “Just for being you and coming from where you have and sharing what you know. I'm inspired by you.”

Caduceus Clay is hopelessly in love.

And he tries to make it known in every way he can just shy of outright saying it. That's the thought when he goes to the Dusts with a sloppy sketch for the design of Fjord's new holy symbol. That's the thought as they sit in the snow together communing before confronting Gelidon the Nightmare in Ivory. It's how he boldly looks him in the eye and tells him that someday, someone, somewhere is going to cry out to whatever gods are there and pray for a miracle, and that prayer will be answered because you showed up. When he sits there on the floor of the inn in Rexxentrum, Fjord on the bed working on getting his armor off, the silence between them warm and easy, and his wishful mind calls it domestic. And love feels like worship, offering up a holy symbol to the new paladin of his goddess.

He gets less brave after that. And it takes the soul-shattering terror of Fjord, chest bloodied once again and going cold on the rain-soaked deck for him to find the bravery from before again. He **knows** , he knows that the revivification **barely** takes hold and he can't help but wonder if it's his own fear poisoning the spell. Fjord stirs and heaves in a breath as life courses back into him and he can finally let out the breath he's been holding. Fjord looks at him, and then back and forth over both shoulders still confused and disoriented.

"Caduceus fought very hard for you, Fjord," Caleb tells him softly. He's making too much of it but he can't help but hear a knowing tone to his voice.

That night as they bed down in the captain's quarters he can’t stand it any longer. If he has to spend one more night not saying it’s going to kill him.

He shakes Fjord’s shoulder and whispers, “Fjord, Fjord wake up.”

“Hm? What? Are we being attacked again?” He stirs and clumsily sits up on his bedroll.

“No, nothing’s wrong. We just need to talk,” he takes his hand and helps pull him up to his feet.

“What are we talking about?" He attempts to rub the sleep from his eyes. 

He leads him out and behind what meager privacy the mast provides, and he just goes ahead and says it before he can stop himself, "I love you. You don't have to love me back."

Fjord is wide awake now, staring at him completely awestruck, "Caduceus?"

He takes a deep breath to steel his nerves, "I didn't realize what I was feeling for a long time and these weird dreams? I was already trying to work those out because I just thought they were weird dreams, I didn't have a reason to think they were anything else and then I met you and something about you was so familiar. And then we became pirates and I could **measure** each time something new happened to you with my dreams so I **knew** they had something to do with you but I couldn't for the life of me wrap my head around it. And once we got back to shore I could always tell when Uk'otoa sent you a nightmare because I sort of had it too? And then, and then that night at the Forge you said that I inspired you and it all came crashing down and I realized. "

"Why didn't you say anything?" His hurt tone catches him off guard.

Eyes closed and shamefacedly he continues, "I, you'd just lost all of your powers and it was a big transition period for you and it was a very vulnerable time and you were looking to me for guidance and I felt like if I acted on anything I would be taking advantage of you and I couldn’t do that. So I did as much as I could without saying it but,” his voice goes small and thin, “you died…”

Fjord leans back against the mast, taking it all in, “Wow, um,” he laughs nervously, “did you have one of these dreams that night at the Forge?”

He nods yes.

“Haaah!” It’s a loud, anxious laugh that catches him off guard, “I ah, thank fucking gods you said something. I’ve been fucking terrified that this was just a weird tangle of mixed up shit that I was misplacing into a crush on you because you were there for me. You uh, you said a lot of stuff about dreams?”

If he says something the dream this must be will surely fall apart so he just nods.

“I dreamt about being alone a lot when I was a kid but ya know, I didn’t make much of it. Fucking orphan dreaming of being alone? What a shocker! There was a dream or two about drowning that, I don’t know, they felt weird, not like how it feels when I dream about the Tide’s Breath. And,” he laughs nervously again, “when you woke me up I was dreaming about walking in a field and I found my own body just lying there, starting to rot, and when I reached out to touch it, the fungus and shit growing from me disappeared and I took my own hand but. It wasn’t my own hand? When I looked down my hands were your hands? If that makes sense?”

Caduceus is at a loss for words, only the slight bluster of the sails above them filling the silence.

“So what do you think all this means?”

He chuckles, “I don’t know.”

“To divine intervention?”

“To divine intervention,” it feels like maybe he’s supposed to kiss him now?

Fjord puts a hand on his chest to stop him, “Believe me, I want to but I died earlier, my mouth is disgusting, stale morning taste but **a lot** worse.”

“Right, of course,” he backs off.

Fjord loosely tangles their fingers together, “There are other places to kiss me if you’re that deadset.”

Caduceus dips his head to give him a peck on the cheek.

Fjord chuckles, “It’s a start.”

“Sorry?” He says tentatively, not sure if he maybe did a bad job.

He loops his arms around his neck to stop him from pulling back, “I’m just teasing.”

Their dreams don’t stop but the frequency slows down. It’s maybe a little weird but it’s how they look out for each other and now that they know they feel so much closer. Even if they’re ever separated, at night they’re together again. It’s a little strange and they don’t entirely understand why it happens, but it’s theirs and they wouldn’t give it up for the world.


End file.
